Blue Whale

The blue whale is one of the rorquals, a family that includes the humpback whale, fin whale, Bryde's whale, sei whale, and minke whale.

The blue whale is the largest mammal, to inhabit the earth. Its body is lengthy, somewhat slender, and streamlined. The Blue Whale's head makes up about one-fourth of its total body length. Its upper part of the head is very broad and low with a single ridge in front of the blowholes to the tip of its nose. When the whale blows, its flume rises up to about 20 feet high.

This giant animal, the Blue Whale is placid and shy and has a few barnacles that attach themselves to the fluke, the tips of the flippers and dorsal fin.

Unlike humans, whales breathe voluntarily. That means they choose when to take a breath. This is important because whales can't breath under water. They surface every few minutes to blow out a mixture of water and air and take in a breath of fresh air. Whales have belly buttons, too just like you and me. Like all mammals, they give birth and nurse live young.

COLOR The Blue Whale is blue-gray in color with a lighter and darker gray splotching. The undersides of its flippers have an ivory color, and the under side of the flipper is dark. Because of the cold waters of the Antarctic, North Pacific and North Atlantic its belly has a yellowish green caste. Early whalers called the Blue Whale, "Sulfur Bottom."

The Blue Whale's dorsal fin is small and curved and the location of the fin is about 3/4ths of the way back on the body. The dorsal fin measures about 12 inches high. Its flippers are narrow and about 9 1/2 feet long. The length of the adult blue whale is 80 feet long. The male Blue Whale weighs about 110 tons while the females being larger weigh up to 150 tons.

They feed at depths of less than 330 feet (but can dive as deep as 1,640 feet). Dives last from 10 to 20 minutes. The Blue Whale feeds almost exclusively on krill. During the summer the Blue Whale consumes about 4 tons of krill daily or about 40 million krill a day.

As a baleen whale, the Blue Whale has hundreds of fringed plates on each side of the upper jaw. These plates consist of keratin that separate into loose little hairs inside the mouth near the tongue.

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